


This Stupid Family

by DawnsEternalLight



Category: Batman (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: Bonding, Brotherly Bonding, Crack Fic, Dick also, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Humor, Jason is a good brother, Tim and Damian are too, a tiny bit of angst if you look really hard, first person POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-20
Updated: 2017-06-20
Packaged: 2018-11-16 17:40:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11257716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DawnsEternalLight/pseuds/DawnsEternalLight
Summary: Jason's just trying to deal with life. A fight with Dick doesn't help. Neither does being caught fighting by Damian and Tim. When they start acting weird and way too nice because of it he decides it's about time he uses things to his advantage. Too bad everything always has to backfire on him. Written in First person POV





	This Stupid Family

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a request on Tumblr, you can find me at Preciousthingsareprecious

It all started when Golden Boy was chewing me out after patrol . By chewing me out I mean yelling at the top of his lungs about _Being safe, Jason_ and _Think before you shoot, Jason_ , and   _If you keep this up you could get killed again, Jason_. Normally I don’t care when Dick’s chewing me out. When he uses words it usually means whatever it is I’ve done (I tune him out most of the time, if I don’t I get it from him, Bruce, and usually Tim so it’s nice to miss at least one of the three) wasn’t all that bad.

It’s when Goldie gives me the silent treatment, that’s when I knew I’ve royally screwed the pooch. You know the look, that stupid kicked puppy, _how could you Jason, I’m your big brother and I worry,_ look? The one that means you’ve actually hurt him instead of worrying him, and his sunshine-y mood will be dampened for a few hours? Yeah, that one. And when he adds silence to that, the kind that’s cold and hurt and makes you wish he’d just yell so someone could feel better? That’s when I have to worry.

So when he’s yelling at me I usually don’t care. Except today. Today he’d pulled the death card, which if you’ve spent ANY time around me at ALL you’d know is kind of my thing.

Dames can use it if he wants, but the Demon Brat’s usually got his head somewhere else and doesn’t bother, which is basically why I let him use it. But Dick? Golden Boy, never-done-anything-wrong, faked-my-death-and-caused-my-family-untold-sadness-and-didn’t-actually-die-so-he-has-no-experience Grayson? He doesn’t get to even touch the thought.  

I tuned right back in at the words _killed again_ and went off on him. Don’t ask me what I said, I can’t remember. It’s always the same between us anyway. Something about Dick only ever being an overbearing older brother when I’m a screw up and not being able to live up to his Golden Status in Bruce’s eyes, and him yelling back that I don’t get it and I never have.

Somehow screaming turned to fists flying and we were really fighting. I’m talking black eyes, bruised ribs, and a few good knocks to the back of the head. It was amazing in a cathartic kind of way.

That is until Dick starts crying. Right there, sitting on the floor of the cave like some kind of four year old whose tantrum’s devolved into the kind of tears that tell you the fight was about something a lot deeper than a torn doll or broken car.

And listen. If you’ve never seen Dick Grayson cry, well count yourself lucky. It’s damn near heartbreaking.

You try to stay together when your older brother, a man whose emotions consist of unbridled optimism, fierce anger, and the tendency to be deadly serious only when the situation calls for it, breaks down in tears.

I thought so.

SO.

Dicky’s sitting there crying and I’m not feeling so good anymore, in fact I’m feeling pretty crappy and I’m sitting there like the dejected four year old’s brother and start to cry.

That’s when everything goes to pot. I mean doesn’t it always? It’s the law, when things suck the only continuing option is for them to suck more. And by suck more I mean suck the most. When I say _that_ what I mean is that my family members with the world’s WORST timing decide to walk in. Who am I talking about? The Replacement and the Demon Brat of course.

Why on earth those two would ever want to be in the same room together I don’t know. Even the cave is a no go spot for them. They can’t stand each other on a good day, and bad ones are enough to make me wish I could still flee the planet with Roy and Kori.

Naturally, I’m shocked when they walk in, but not nearly as shocked as they are when they see Dick and I sitting on the floor, need I remind you BAWLING OUR FRIcKIN EYES OUT.  

I start trying to scrub the tears off my face all while Dicky’s bawling harder. I thought he’d seen the kids but no, he flings himself forward and grabs my shoulders.

“Jay, listen.” He says, eyes suddenly dry, “I know I screw up a lot as a big brother, but listen just this once. You’ve got to be more careful, ok? Please, I can’t lose you again.” Then his eyes water like he’s some kind of character from a Ghibli movie. “I can’t.”

And frick if I didn’t start crying again. But there’s no way I’m letting tweedle dumb or tweedle dee see that so I’m on my feet the next second and stomping out of the room muttering about how older brothers suck and how I never asked for one in the first place.

You’d think that’d be the end of it right? Dicky boy’s said his thing, the brats have probably got enough blackmail to ruin me for life, and I get away by the skin of my teeth swearing never to get caught in that kind of situation again.

But nooooo I can’t be that lucky, can I?

I know what you’re thinking. It’s Dick’s fault right? Wrong. It’s alright though, I’d have thought the same thing. It’s always Dick sticking his head where it doesn’t belong. But this time we’re both wrong.

It’s the wonder twins. No not the good [ol’ animal of the week and bucket of ice water](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iOcxSXiw7I) twins, I mean Tim and Damian. The two least likely of my siblings to attempt to fix me or get involved in my business.

I don’t even know what I was doing at the manor still. Any sane person would have hightailed it out of there the moment Dick started crying. But we’ve long ago established I don’t always act in the sanest fashion. You can’t blame me, no one in this family does.  

So the brats (henceforth sometime to be referred to as the Wonder Twins. And, no I don’t care that they aren’t actually twins, they’re about as useless and woefully ignorant as those two are anyway) come sneaking into the kitchen where I’m curled around a cup of coffee. As if they’re actually sneaking or casual about any of it. It was obvious from the side glances Tim kept giving Damian that something was up. And not something good or the kid would’ve made a beeline for the half full coffee pot.

I’m in no mood. Read: No. Mood. To play their games so I just sit there sipping on my coffee trying as hard as I can to forget that they walked in me having on what must have seemed like some crappy heart-to-heart with Dick.

It was a bad idea. Before I realized what happened they had me cornered. One on each side. 

  
Let me sidetrack for a second. If Tim ever sits down next to you in a kitchen with a coffee pot half full of the blood that flows through his veins, and he HASN'T gotten a cup, run. Don’t stop to think about it. Don’t ask him if he wants a cup, just get your sorry self out of there as fast as possible.

Anyway.

Timbo’s sitting on one side and Demon Brat’s taken the other and their looking at me. It’s not a normal look either of being tired after patrol and they happened to pick the seats next to me, or the kind of look that tells you they’ve plotted your demise (though at that point I was kind of rooting for that option, at least it’d get me out of the humiliation of dealing with Dick again in the morning). But this look I couldn’t place. Like they were trying to figure me out. As if I’d gone and grown a third eye or second head. Suffice to say, it was freaking me out.

I had two options. Leave or stay and listen to whatever it was they had to say. It should be obvious which option I chose.

It was Damian that stopped me from making like a banana and splitting right then and there.

“Todd?” It was a question, and in a tone I’d never heard the brat use before. Something between honest curiosity and confusion.

“Brat.”

Tim was next, “You’re a little brother.”

He was looking at me like I was one of B’s old case files. And not the one’s he’d solved, but those weird one’s even he hadn’t quite figured out yet but was too stubborn to let go of. His face a frown in the way only he and Bruce know how to do, everything turned down in thought.

“Good catch, Sherlock. You wanna tell me my hair’s black next?”

Tim shrugged, almost uncomfortable, eyes going to Damian again. I couldn’t stop looking between them, like watching some kind of tennis match. It was like they’d never realized before that I had an older brother, that I was like them.

While part of me was surprised the rest was mad. I mean, what did they think? That they had the monopoly on little brother status to fight over between them? They treated it like it was a one person deal, as if there was one Wayne brat who could own the title of little brother and everyone else was older. I mean I’d seen them do it to each other, strip the status away with venom in their words and pain in their actions. It was impossible to miss, their treating each other like he wasn’t the same.

It was downright infuriating. Because honestly they were both little brothers, both of them too young to even be fighting in Bruce’s gorram crusade let alone fighting about who should get the most love from their emotionally stunted father. They shouldn’t have to fight over something that belonged to both of them.

And they were going to drag me into that mess? Nope. No way was I letting that happen.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” I said, shoving off Tim’s hand that immediately went to my arm.  

I wasn't’ having it. Wasn’t going to think of the complications that came with their screwed up relationship or how it might affect mine, or even the words I could say in that moment to help. Something in me cracked and I was done. Done with crying brothers and brothers who’d never looked past their own stupid prejudices to look at the absolute crap storm that I dealt with on a daily basis, done with this family of dysfunction.

“What did you two think? That I live in some crazy limbo like the rest of you? That maybe dying exempted me from being a part of the family as much as it exempted me from every other thing?” Both flinched back at this. “No, you know what, I’m out before I actually get mad.”

Here’s the thing. I should have left. I mean I did storm out of there, leaving the Wonder Twins to scramble to find a way to mop up the mess of emotions they’d made. But I didn’t actually leave the building. With the night I’d had, going from bad to worse to frickin unbelievable it only made sense to bolt. And on any other night I would have. Would have been out of there. But I was tired. Tired of arguing and being angry and the coffee wasn’t cutting it so I found the first soft surface I could and crashed.

Sleep’s supposed to be this magical fix all. You pass out after a crappy night and the next morning everything’s all hunky dory right?

Wrong.

I woke up feeling worse than I did when I’d passed out. Half of it was because I’d fallen asleep on one of the couches in the living room, arm flung up over one end, legs hooked over the other, with what amounted to a lumpy cushion for a pillow. I could have slept on the floor and turned out better.

Honestly? That wasn’t the problem, I’d slept on and woken up in hundreds of places far worse than B’s old couch. No, I woke up with guilt tugging at me, wrapping in my gut like a coil of regret and missed opportunity.

Dick was right. I HAD been stupid on patrol, B’s out of town on some League mission and I took it as a chance to act out. Then I went and lashed out at the wonder twins who honestly didn’t deserve it (this time). Yeah, I woke up feeling pretty miserable.

It’s still early and I could have left then, but there’s that stupid guilt churning away and I can’t bring myself to. So, I skulk upstairs and rifle through Dick’s closet for something clean to wear that’s not my uniform and a shower. Sure, I’ve got a closet of my own stuff, Alf’s made sure to keep it stocked ever since I started even hovering around the family again. But it’s in my old room. The old room I haven’t updated and use only if both my legs are broken or I’m forced to by a Disappointed Alfred and Stern Bruce.

Dick’s clothes are always more comfortable anyway, plus there’s a great kind of satisfaction that comes when you can sneak into your brother’s room while he’s sleeping and filch his clothes. The clothes he set out the night before. The one’s he was planning to wear. It doesn’t matter what kind of fashion atrocity he might have set out, with that temptation I’m taking ‘em every time.  

Then, it’s coffee time.

Coffee time means one of two things. Either I’m going to find Alfred in the kitchen and get a welcome I’ve never really deserved, or I’m going to run into a combo. Someone else with him, (usually either Bruce or Tim) and that welcome is forgotten in lieu of damage control. 

It’s just Alfred, and honestly I’d stay over more often for the smile and hug he gives me. It’s like just being there’s a gift to him, and as guilty as that makes me it also acts like a balm, healing some hurt I didn’t know I had.

I’ve got to stop again and talk about Alfred. The man is a saint. And he doesn’t get the kind of honor and love he deserves. He’s put up with generations of Wayne crap starting with good old Gram and Gramps moving all the way down to the Wonder Twins and their fighting. And you know what? I’m sure he’s dropped about a billion hints to Dicky that he needs to settle down and get to giving some great grand kids. Because with all the trouble this family gives him he still loves us. More than that he believes in us, and if that doesn’t make him a kind of saint I don’t know what does.

I bet you're wondering what I’m even doing telling this story, right? Where are you going with this, Jason? It sounds like a typical crap night and aftermath to me. Well I’m getting there. You see it might have started with Golden Boy chewing me out, but things escalated with the Wonder Twins. 

You see, for some reason (probably the great realization of my younger brother status) the two decided they were going to deal with my with kid gloves. Not only that, but they were getting along. Damian’s usual fount of insults was strangely dry, and Timmy didn’t once argue with Damian or I about anything, in fact the kid offered me a cup of coffee.  

Now I’ve already said I was feeling guilty when I woke up. I tend to have a terrible default when I’m feeling guilty, and that’s to make it worse. I took one look at the pity care my younger brothers were giving me and an idea formed.

I was already planning to ignore Dicky until we had another explosive fight where I could finally get yelled at like he should have done the night before (I told you, I don’t handle guilt well). Now, I saw their attempt at some kind of apology and I could have accepted it. Instead, I decided I’d take advantage of it.

If my brothers were going to play nice I was going to play it up. Of course I started small, a kind of testing of the waters. I stole Tim’s coffee.

Ok so maybe that’s not the smallest thing, especially since I chugged the still way too hot cup, but on the scale of things it wasn’t too bad.

I used the mug to hide my grin when Tim’s eye twitched.

I built things up from there. Leaning on Damian’s head, having Tim fetch me something to drink, taking Alfred (the cat) right off Damian’s lap (the cat didn’t seem to mind, Damian had to squelch a glare).

Then I was chatting with them, throwing out the craziest insults I could come up with, teasing, ruffling either of their hair any time it was in range. They bore it all with the patience of one undergoing penance. And I was blatantly abusing my newfound powers, just waiting for one of them to crack.

It happened when I stole the entire cookie jar from the kitchen and blamed it on both of them. I could see it, the decision that enough was enough and whatever they’d done was not worth the hand they were being dealt as Alfred reminded them again of just how spoiled their dinner would be if they’d really devoured the entire jar of cookies.

I knew I’d worn out my welcome and made to scoot, but I was a few seconds too slow. I blame it on the fact that I was enjoying the chastised look on both their faces just too much.

I’m halfway down the hallway when it happens. Dames is on one side, Timmy the other, both of them hooking their arms through mine.  

If you’ve never been double teamed by the Wonder Twins it’s a sight to behold. Seriously. If those two could ever set their differences aside long enough to actually get along- well let’s just say the world’s probably safer without that particular long term team up.

Then again, they’d do a lot of good too.

BUT THAT’S BESIDE THE POINT. What isn’t is that I was surrounded by my two little brothers, faces obviously plotting and I know I’m screwed because they’ve got me by the arms and their leading me somewhere.

Let me take a moment to note that I haven’t seen Dick all day. I’d been avoiding him, but at the same time I also kind of forgotten about him in my eagerness to make the wonder twins feel every second of my retribution.

They march me through the manor, and I could shake them, but I don’t honestly want to deal with what they’d do if made them force me to go somewhere, so I go with ‘em. Besides I’ve made my bed, it’s the kind of day (week probably) that I’m willing to lie in it.

Imagine my surprise when they shove me in the library and Tim stalks off leaving me with the Tater Tot.

Dames is taking none. And I mean NONE of my chatter or attempts at getting past him. Who knew such a tiny kid could be so tenacious about keeping me in a library?

He finally shoved some book in my hands and told me to either read or take a nap, so I go for reading, curious about the book he’s handed me. And he’s handed me a frickin dictionary. He’s smirking and I’m ready to tell him exactly what he can go and do with the dictionary when the door opens again and Tim peers in.

“Ready?” Damian asks.

Tim nods and I know I’m in for it. I start to stomp out, but the Demon Brat’s got me by the dictionary first and then by the sleeve, yanking me and my precarious balance back and onto one of those stuffy chairs Bruce insists on keeping in the library.

I’ll state again just how bad an idea it is to let Damian and Tim work together.

“Brats.” I hiss.

“Todd.” Damian’s got that smirk again. “We realize that we interrupted an important moment in your life last evening after patrol, and have often denied you the pleasure of being one of Grayson’s little brothers.”

Tim’s nodding, still half in and out of the doorway, the door itself mostly closed, “As a sincere display of our regret, we’ve figured out a way to make up for lost time.”

“No.” I say again, arms crossing. “I wouldn’t have screwed with you both all day if I had any idea of what was coming.”

“Don’t worry, Jay. This was happening either way.” Tim said.

“We just figured you might as well enjoy yourself before—” Tim shrugged, “Well, before this.” 

He opens the door and in walks Dick. Of frickin course it’s Dick.

“We’ve discussed the issue with Grayson, and he’s agreed that you’ve missed out on some important life experiences, and has graciously offered to help fix that.” Damian says.

“I’ll pass.” I say.

“See.” Tim tells me, opening the door wide so Damian can leave. “That’s not exactly an option. Dick’s so excited to spend some good, quality time with his little brother, and we’d hate to ruin that.”

“We’ll see you at dinner.” Damian says and then they’ve both slipped out the door, the lock clicking behind them leaving me with my smiling older brother.


End file.
